Mark Redwine said he is haunted by the perplexing disappearance of his 13-year-old son Dylan during a Thanksgiving visit in November 2012.

There are so many possibilities, and all of them seem a little far-fetched, but because something odd did happen, one of those unlikely explanations has to be right. The boy who he never argued with didn’t just vanish into thin air.

He ponders so many different scenarios: Dylan is picked up while he is hitchhiking by someone he trusted, only to be kidnapped; Dylan goes fishing and a bear attacks and kills him; someone breaks into his home and snatches his son; Dylan is distraught because of his parents’ breakup and wanders into the forest.

“What is out of the realm of possibility is that I would do anything to my son,” Mark Redwine said in lengthy interview Friday, during which he offered rambling explanations about his own version of what became of Dylan.

On Sunday, Nov. 18, 2012, Dylan took a 300-mile airplane flight from his home in Colorado Springs to Durango to visit his father.

The eighth grader at Lewis-Palmer Middle School lived in Colorado Springs with his mother Elaine Redwine and older brother Cory.

When Dylan arrived at the airport his father picked him up. The boy texted his mother at 7:06 p.m., telling her that he had arrived safely and that he and his dad were going out to dinner.

His dad took him to a McDonald’s for dinner and to Wal-Mart to buy some things.

On the 45-minute drive north to his home, Dylan asked his dad whether he could go to the home of his friends for a visit. Up until four months earlier, Dylan, his brother and his mom had been living in nearby Bayfield.

The Redwines had moved from Denver to Bayfield in 2004 when Elaine took a job at Fort Lewis College, according to the Durango Herald.

When the couple divorced three years later, Elaine Redwine and the boys continued to live in Bayfield and Mark Redwine stayed in the house near Vallecito Reservoir. Elaine moved to Colorado Springs in July 2012 when she took a job at Colorado College in Colorado Springs.

The Thanksgiving visit was mandated by court order. His parents had been involved in a contentious divorce for more than half of Dylan’s life.

When father and son arrived at Mark’s house, Dylan texted his friends up until 8 p.m. and made arrangements to see them the next morning. His friends said he was to meet them at 6:30 a.m. Tuesday.

That next morning, though, Dylan was still under his blankets, asleep on the couch, Mark Redwine would later explain. Mark Redwine had errands to run in town. He waited for his son to get up until 7:30 a.m. so that he could take Dylan to the home of a friend.

Mark Redwine said he tried to roust his son. But when he didn’t wake, Mark Redwine drove to town alone.

“He was very much alive,” he said.

Mark Redwine visited his divorce lawyer.

When he returned home at 11:30 a.m., there was a dirty cereal bowl beside the sink. The television was on Nickelodeon and his son’s fishing pole was gone. So was his black-and-gray backpack. A few articles of clothing were left behind on the couch.

Kirk Mitchell is a general assignment reporter at The Denver Post who focuses on criminal justice stories. He began working at the newspaper in 1998, after writing for newspapers in Mesa, Ariz., and Twin Falls, Idaho, and The Associated Press in Salt Lake City. Mitchell first started writing the Cold Case blog in Fall 2007, in part because Colorado has more than 1,400 unsolved homicides.